Justice? Self-interest more like

It is reported that Blair has now given 'evidence' to the Iraq Study Group. What he said about how getting a solution for Palestine would reduce the violence in Iraq is honourable but off course. At the outset of the invasion in 2003 or even in 2004, that might have made a difference, but now the collapse of Iraq is too far in full swing for the Israeli-Palestinian issue to have any bearing. Do Sunnis or Shi'ites slaughtering each other in sectarian rivalry really care about their Palestinian brethren to lay down their arms if an answer was found? Once again, the Arab world is seen as a monolithic bloc, which is as insulting as saying the ethnic tensions in Kosovo can be laid to rest with a resolution of the Basque problem. A pity Edward Said is no longer around to rebutt the Prime Minister.
Also, this ISG is chaired by James Baker. With Bob Yates as Defence Secretary-elect, we can really say that this is Bush's second term, but not the one sitting in the Oval Office, but the elder Bush as he takes an ever increasing role, despite being past eighty. Yates and Baker are his men and this is just influence at the sharp end.
I have severe qualms over James Baker as head of the ISG, which is looking for a way to give some stability to Iraq. When I was in Mongolia in the first half of the year, Baker paid a visit to the country. It wasn't a social call. A big North American company, Ivanhoe Mines, had bought up the rights to a stretch of land in the south, Oyu Tolgoi, earmarked to become the biggest copper mine in the world. Under the terms, Mongolia would get 2% of the revenue and the rest would go to Ivanhoe. Baker was here for nepotistic reasons, since his son (James Baker Jnr.) is one of the top consultants to the Ivanhoe Mines president, Robert Friedland, the latter who looks oily and lizard-like even in photographs. Despite the varying price of copper, Oyu Tolgoi, was set to become the economic salvation of Mongolia, until the government which fell shortly after signing the contract because of corruption, signed it away almost free to a foreign company. Massive street protests have occured in the central city square in front of the parliament and Baker flew in to strongarm the current Mongolian government into sticking to the contract, without any amendments to its inequitable status, warning of dire consequences for the future of foreign investment should change to the terms happen. Mongolia became democratic in 1990, but if this is how Baker treats countries who became democratic under their own steam, what will happen to Iraq where the USA is the chief occupying power? Plainly to say, American interests will supersede Iraqi ones; that much is obvious.